spilled perfume

September 9, 2007

'Mmm, your kitchen smells very nice,' says Véronique, as she drops by with some apples from her garden on Saturday afternoon.
'Yes, it's tuberose, mixed with violets and iris,' I say. 'A very expensive accident.'

On Wednesday afternoon, I interviewed John Galliano in Paris. There can’t be many fashion journalists who have gone to interview Dior's resident designer armed with a large watering can and a huge nylon holdall filled with organic vegetables from M&S. But en route to New York the previous week, I received a call from the press officer at Dior offering me an interview with John at short notice. I warned her that I was about to go shopping and would be travelling with baggage but still, I felt very guilty as she helped me to ferry my bags – six of them in total - down the platform, there being no trolleys on the platform at Gare de Nord again [Eurostar people, you so need to sort this out!]

Despite my bag lady appearance [this was definitely a missed opportunity to wear high heels and my Bottega Veneta coat] John was charming. This is the second time I have interviewed him, the first being ten years ago when he had just taken over at Dior. We went to breakfast in the Marais, with Dior's new designer dressed in neon orange shell suit bottoms, a union jack tail coat and a furry trapper hat with big ear flaps. I seem to remember that he attracted quite a lot of attention.

Before I left Dior, I was handed a huge bag, containing the three very expensive new perfumes that the house is about to launch. Then, on the TGV back home to rural France I discovered that I had left my house keys, my glasses and my new silver Tiffany pen [the fourth I have lost this year] in London. Fortunately, I had left a set of keys with friends who own the bookshop in the square. But as I arrived home, I dropped the huge Christian Dior bag, dislodging the stopper and contents of two of the bottles [over €400 worth of perfume] onto the kitchen floor.

As a result of this series of mishaps– and by unfortunate synchronicity having also run out of contact lenses - I have been forced to blindly grope my way around the house for the past few days, unable to see anything. But on the upside, I can probably claim to have the most expensively scented kitchen in France.

Two years ago I hung up my high heels, put the Prada handbags into storage and left behind my fashionable West London life to renovate an old village house in rural France. Et voila. This blog is about what happened next.... more-->